That Boy in that Picture

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That image of the girl in Vietnam running from napalm still haunts the world today. It was one of the most cogent case of war’s horror being captured in a single frame. (Fewer people realise she has a book, however). As we ponder the newer generation of a snap that changed the world, can we consider if the father of the child that was tragically drowned could produce his own harrowing account of his life? Unlikely.

Abdullah Kurdi has suffered the greatest emotional pain a human can endure. It’s something I don’t know how or if I could cope with. Is there any way to discuss his loss without sounding hideously callous? We have to try, because the harrowing picture of the poor boy is transforming Europe and there is something not right.

Should anything happen to my own children, I think one of the first things I’d ask myself is: could I have stopped it? Kurdi could have. He was leaving Turkey, not Syria, where he’d lived for three years,  well away from war. He undertook a journey he surely knew was dangerous for reasons not entirely clear. At some point he claimed he wanted to go to England (not a nearer, safer country) to get his teeth fixed. This claim was later amplified to explain his teeth had been removed by torture. Why did he not mention this in the many interviews he sat? Surely something so terrible, so compelling a reason would be the first thing he tell the world? Instead it appeared later in an unsourced blog.


Why did his aunt lie? She claimed his appeal for asylum in Canada was rejected. In fact, it was never submitted, and she surely knew this. Again, this isn’t a small lapse of memory, it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead the world at a very crucial time over an incredibly emotive subject. Finally, was Abdullah Kurdi  a people smuggler as a reputable Australian newspaper has claimed?

These are exceptionally difficult queries to raise at a time when every European is competing with each other to show they have more compassion for young Aylan than the next person. As Brendon O'Neil says, it’s almost become a form of moral pornography. As such, it’s become the perfect political weapon for the left wing to push for more and more immigration. They were less (as in, non) vocal when Christian children were being beheaded in Iraq.

Are there genuine refugees, escaping from the mess that we created in Syria? Technically, no, not in England., A refugee seeks the nearest available safe haven. (Saudi Arabia have not taken migrants but have offered to build two hundred mosques in Germany).

Are there people who need and deserve our help? Yes , of course.  The true compassionate person would seek to help them, by avoiding the ISIS insurgents they have openly admitted to sending, by encouraging the separation of those who discard their passports, are taught to lie or who perhaps are men of a fighting age (57 percent), fleeing their country to enjoy the freedoms that our men of fighting age actually fought and died for.

Until we can reach some level of realism and pragmatism rather than seeking to indulge ourselves in cheap goodwill, we will only guarantee that further conflicts and a far wider spectrum of misery is guaranteed at some unspecified point in the future.

The image of Phan Thi Kim Phuc transformed the world, probably for the better. Twenty or thirty years from now, I’m not sure Abdullah Kurdi will view his own tragic loss, his circumstances or his (or his aunt’s) reactions as unavoidable. As a father, my heart goes out to him. As a rational person, I fear for the long term consequences of our despicable actions in Syria and the domino effect it has set in motion.